That's right. The qualities are descriptions of a REAL thing--BLUR. The roundness, smoothness, are descriptions, or QUALITIES, of something REAL, that is BLUR. You are saying that quality ITSELF is a thing, if so, you should be able to give me aspects or QUALITIES of the real thing called quality, BEYOND THE BLUR. The blur is REAL, so the softness, or roundness are DESCRIPTION of a real thing--BLUR. Since you say bokeh is NOT just blur, then you should be able to give me some descriptive qualities of that quality, roundness and smoothness CANNOT BE IT, those are qualities of the BLUR. Tell me what the bokeh is BEYOND THE BLUR, YOU CAN'T, it's that simple.

You are correct, bokeh is the name for the quality of the blur.

It is neither good nor bad; its just a more specific term so you don't say things like "I like that blur" because someone might just think you like the amount of the blur instead of how smooth/angular that blur is.

Bokeh and blur are one and the same, yep. Bokeh just sounds more mystical, artsy but it IS blur, there is nothing that can be described about it that is not subjective beyond the blur. Whether we like the various qualities of that blur are up to us subjectively.

Are there different qualities of blur, from angular to smooth, which are independent from the amount of blur?

Of course, there are as many qualities as there are differing aspects to a real thing. I could think of many qualit5ies a chair might have. It could have the quality of being brown, made of wood, has wood grrain, if I thought long enough I could come up with several qualities that chair has that we could all agree on because the qualities are real, demonstrable aspects from one person to another. That's not the same as me saying, "I find that chair to be a quality work of art", quality in that way is 100 percent subjective. You may not feel it is overal a quality work.

See the conflict you have? You want to say that bokeh is NOT JUST in the mind, and describing something only in the mind would be meaningless because there is NO concrete definition for something that is only in the mind, yet you also cannot show bokeh to have qualities like the chair being brown, yet you need to because if you don't, you are back to admitting it is only in the mind and is subjective.

So you are now cornered and need to show bokeh is not in just the mind. So if bokeh is a real thing, guess what? You should be able to describe qualities that it has, that are the same for everyone, like the chair being brown. When I ask you to do this, YOU can't give anything but descriptions (qualities) OF BLUR and BLUR ONLY. In other words, all you are doing is saying bokeh is another word for blur, since you can't give me any real differences between what you call bokeh and what we all call blur.

In order for you to show bokeh has some aspect other than just what blur is, ya gotta describe it in some way that is real, like the chair being brown, yet it needs to be a description that is not just another quality of being BLUR. You can't. There is nothing beyond blur that can be demonstrated to everyone to be bokeh and not just a description/quality of what blur is. Roundness, choppiness, those are descriptions of certain aspects of blur, and if it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, sounds like a duck, IT IS A DUCK. So bokeh is NOT the quality of blur, IT IS THE BLUR, because you can't give me any aspects to it that aren't also descriptions of aspects of blur.

No one is cornered.

Bokeh can be described as smooth or angular, or natural or artificial if you go with my other point that bokeh is the deviation from natural blur. Looking at a photo and seeing that blurred light is octagonal instead of circular is as easily shown as pointing to a bar stool and saying the seat is round.